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Kim, Yeonmin. “W. H. Auden’s Poetry: An Affirmation of the Affirmative Character of Art.” Studies in English Language & Literature 42.4 (2016): 1-27. W. H. Auden left Britain for America in search of the autonomy of art unaffected by political ideologies; and at the same time he acknowledged the limitation of poetry, that is, the affirmative character of art, its frustrated realization of revolution in society. With his ambivalence toward art in mind, I will demonstrate how Auden searches for ways in which art works on society despite its limitations. First, Auden notices the problem of dishonesty in political poetry. Criticizing his own political poems published during the 1930s, he takes heed of a dramatized role of the poet as a public speaker during a political crisis. Second, Auden recognizes that art cannot change reality but can allow a revolutionary reformation of the social order only within the realm of art itself. Art delimits itself to the logic of the affirmative character of culture. Auden nonetheless shows that only if art retains its autonomy can it raise a critical voice against a society in which all individualities are sacrificed to collective ideology. The autonomy of art is the core of its social indictment. Last but not least, in his ekphrases, Auden alludes to the way art allows one to question one’s attitude toward the suffering of others. His ekphrases interrogate the guilty conscience of the onlooker. (Chonnam National University)